Death in St James's Park (17 page)

‘Thomas, please!’ snapped Hannah. ‘I had a difficult day yesterday, because the Queen was upset over Mary Wood, and I must attend Mass just after dawn. I need to sleep.’

‘It is almost dawn now,’ said Chaloner, relieved that the night was over at last. He climbed out of bed and set about lighting a candle. ‘Shall I walk with you to White Hall?’

Hannah hauled the bedcovers over her head with a groan. ‘Go away! But please do not play that wretched viol. It disturbs the neighbours.’

Chaloner knew the neighbours could not hear him through the thick walls, and resented her lie. He said nothing, though, and had almost finished dressing when she sat up.

‘I cannot go back to sleep now that I am awake. I told you not to drink that cold milk before we went to bed – that is why you were restless all night. Or is it an investigation devised by your horrible Earl that has you so disturbed? What has he ordered you to do this time?’

‘Explore the death of some ducks
in St James’s Park.’

‘Ducks?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Have you fallen out of favour with him, then?’

‘I have never been in favour.’

Hannah sounded worried. ‘I know I often tell you to look for another master, but do not annoy this one until you have something else lined up. We cannot manage without your salary.’

They would have been able to manage perfectly well on what he could have saved if she had not moved to a larger house and hired staff they did not need, but he kept the thought to himself.

‘You would have to sell your viols,’ she continued. ‘To tide us over until—’

‘No,’ he said firmly. He had very few personal belongings – a spy’s life was necessarily nomadic, and he had lost count of the times he had been forced to abandon all he owned at a moment’s notice – but his viols were sacrosanct, along with a book given to him by his first wife.

Hannah was silent for a moment. ‘Is anything wrong, Tom? You have been remarkably taciturn since Sweden, even by your standards.’

Nothing, he thought bitterly, except a master who despised him, enquiries that were likely to prove dangerous, the fact that he had been instrumental in sending a man to his death, and a wife who itched to hawk his viols. But Hannah’s voice had been gentle, and he knew she was trying to bridge the rift that had opened between them. He went to sit on the bed, and although he thought she would be safer knowing nothing about the Post Office, he did tell her about the birds.

‘The poor things,’ she said when he had finished. ‘Perhaps you should hide in
the park, and see whether you can catch these villains in the act. They will certainly strike again, given that they did not stop even when one of them fell victim to his own poison.’

‘That might take days.’

‘Not necessarily. You say the ducks died last Wednesday, three Fridays ago, and the Monday before that, while the penguin was killed the night before yesterday. The King was entertaining in the Banqueting House on all four of those occasions. And he is due to do it again on Tuesday. Try waiting for these rogues then.’

Chaloner stared at her. ‘Why would they strike during a revel?’ He answered his own question. ‘Because any noise made by agitated birds would be drowned out by the sounds of merrymaking.’

‘It makes sense to me, and it is worth a try.’

Chaloner smiled, heartened. ‘Thank you.’

‘I have some bad news, Tom. I was going to tell you last night, but you seemed oddly out of sorts after I told you about the suicide of that clerk, so I decided to wait. The Queen is going to Epsom next week, for the waters. I am to ride there before her to make everything ready.’

‘So what is the bad news?’ asked Chaloner, wondering if she expected him to accompany her. If so, there would be trouble, because the Earl was unlikely to let him go.

Hannah’s expression hardened. ‘That I am going to Epsom and you will be without me.’

‘Oh.’ Chaloner saw he had hurt her feelings, and hastened to make amends. ‘I shall miss you.’

She regarded him coolly. ‘I should hope so. I miss you when you are away, although I confess you are gone so often that I am growing rather used to it. The sooner you abandon that Earl and find someone
who will keep you in London, the better.’

‘Can we send the servants to visit their families?’ asked Chaloner, trying not to look too eager at the prospect of having the house to himself. ‘I doubt I will be here much if you are away.’

‘That is a kind thought, Tom, but how will you manage without them?’

‘With the greatest of difficulty, I imagine,’ said Chaloner solemnly.

Once he was outside, Chaloner realised he had been mistaken about the hour; it was not nearing dawn at all, but still the middle of the night. However, it was an excellent time to see what answers could be found in the General Letter Office, so he went there immediately, walking as no hackneys were available. He did not blame their drivers for declining to be out – it was bitterly cold again, and he was half-tempted to return to his warm bed himself.

When he reached Post House Yard, he slipped into the shadows cast by Wood’s mansion, and settled down to watch, unwilling to break in until he was sure the place was not under surveillance by another investigation. It was not long before his caution bore fruit – a flicker of movement under some trees indicated that someone was there. Silently, he inched towards it.

He was still some distance away when Morland stepped out of his hiding place to stamp his feet and slap his arms, complaining about the weather and his life in general. As one of the most basic rules of surveillance was silence, and even novices knew not to chatter, Chaloner wondered what the secretary thought he was doing. Morland was answered in monosyllables by a companion whose
voice Chaloner recognised as Freer’s.

‘I should not be engaged in such demeaning work,’ Morland grumbled. He was wearing a richly embroidered cloak to ward off the chill. ‘I shall complain to the Earl tomorrow.’

‘Do that,’ said Freer.

‘I was assistant to a Secretary of State,’ Morland railed on. ‘I was privy to great secrets, all of which I passed to His Majesty. I should not be out here like a common watchman. I deserve better.’

‘Yes.’

‘Is this the way loyalty is repaid? I risked my life by betraying Thurloe, who is as deadly a villain as you could ever hope to meet. Yet here I am, reduced to skulking in the shadows with the likes of you. It is not to be borne!’

‘No.’

‘You must feel the same way, so why not mention it to the Earl? Then he will dismiss Gery, and appoint me as marshal instead.
I
will not order you to spend all night in the cold, you can be sure of that.’

Freer did not reply, and Chaloner thought Morland’s wits must be addled if he expected his companion to agree to such a suggestion. The Earl would probably do nothing other than report the discussion to Gery, at which point Freer would find himself without a job. And Morland? His cunning tongue would doubtless see
him
absolved of mutiny.

But listening to the slippery secretary’s litany of complaints was hardly productive, so Chaloner turned his attention to the Post Office. Entering through the front door was obviously out of the question, so he walked to the back instead. Unfortunately, this comprised a tall brick wall
that would be impossible to scale without a ladder. Thus the only other possibility was to break into Storey’s cottage and enter the General Letter Office via their shared courtyard.

He picked the lock on the curator’s door and padded soundlessly through the house to the parlour. There was a faint but unpleasant smell, and he could only suppose that Harriet, Eliza and Sharon still lay beneath their satin covers. He opened the window and scrambled into the yard beyond, frozen weeds crackling beneath his feet.

He stood in the shadows for a moment, watching the building he was about to invade. It was in darkness, and the only sound was a dog barking several streets away. One of its windows had a crooked shutter, so he crept towards it, and had prised it open and climbed through in less than a minute, although speed had its price – he tore his coat on a jagged piece of wood. Once inside, he listened carefully. Timbers creaked as they contracted in the cold, and there was a skittering of small claws. Mice.

He lit a candle and started his search in the Sorting Room, but it was not long before he realised he was wasting his time. The General Letter Office was by definition full of documents, and he could not possibly hope to trawl through them all. He turned to the adjoining offices, but the clutter told him nothing other than that its employees were inundated with business. Discouraged, he made his way up the stairs to the offices occupied by the lesser clerks.

In one, he discovered a pile of letters, all
neatly embossed with the date on which they had been posted – a brand known as a ‘Bishop-Mark’. O’Neill’s predecessor had listened to his customers’ complaints about the length of time that letters were in transit, and had devised a system whereby they were
stamped when they were received, which meant the Post Office could not lie about how long it had had them. The public had been delighted, although O’Neill had confided at Hannah’s soirée that it was a nuisance, as it forced him to be more efficient than was convenient.

Bishop-Marks comprised a circle, with two letters in the top half representing the month and a number below for the day. The handful Chaloner held had been stamped IA 10, indicating they had been posted on the tenth day of January, but a sly squiggle had been added to make them read IA 18, a date yet to come. It was evidence that the Post Office intended to keep them for an additional week, either to give the Spymaster’s agents time to read them, or because the Clerk of the Road had too much post already and was unwilling to hire additional horses. It was dishonest, especially as several were marked ‘Haste, haste, post haste’.

He ascended to the top floor, and froze when he heard voices. There was a light, too. He doused his candle quickly, and crept towards the sound, peering around a door to see five men. One was slitting seals with a hot knife, three more were making copies of the letters’ contents, while the last repaired the damage with sticks of wax. They were Williamson’s men, monitoring correspondence between ‘persons of interest’.

Chaloner was about to creep away when disaster struck: his sword scraped against the wall. All five men whipped around to stare at the door. He was going to be caught.

Cursing under his breath, Chaloner ran silently down the stairs and along a corridor, hearing the clerks hot on his heels. Unfortunately, the hallway ended with a locked door – the one that led to the disused wing. He stopped and drew his sword, pressing back into the darkest of the shadows as he waited for the trouble to begin. He tensed as a lamp bobbed closer towards him, hoping he could disable a couple of his pursuers before the fight began in earnest, to even the odds a little. Then the lantern stopped.

‘It must have been
a mouse,’ said one, peering into the gloom. ‘O’Neill should set traps before they start eating the post, but he is too mean to buy them.’

It was not many moments before the light receded, and Chaloner was alone again. He released the breath he had been holding, and turned to the door. The lock was robust, and represented a challenge even for his superior skills. He picked it eventually, and stepped through the door. He had just closed it behind him when he heard footsteps. He put his eye to the keyhole and saw a soldier there, holding a lamp in one hand while he adjusted his clothing with the other. It was a guard, and Chaloner had been extremely fortunate that a call of nature had drawn the fellow away at the right time.

Unlike the main building, the south wing was only two storeys high. Chaloner relit his candle, and explored the upper one first. It reeked of damp and mould, and contained nothing but dirty sacks. One had split, spilling letters – all prepaid – across the floor. They were yellow with age. He untied another that looked newer, and discovered missives with Bishop-Marks reading OC 23 and NO 10. It proved that the Post Office regularly accepted correspondence that it never bothered to deliver, and that it had been doing so for some time.

He returned to the ground floor, where he discovered that broken window shutters had been repaired and ashes in one or two hearths told of recent fires. Clearly, the wing was not as abandoned as he had supposed. One chamber contained a desk, covered in papers. He grabbed a handful, and shoved them in his coat to read later. As he did so, something scratched his hand – tiny splinters from the window he had crawled through, which had caught in his ripped sleeve. He brushed them off, and was about to leave when he noticed something wrong with the proportions of the room. It was too narrow, and the ceiling boss was off-centre. He walked to the chamber next door, and saw a similar skewing, but in the opposite direction.

He had been trained to locate
hidden rooms, so it did not take him long to discover a concealed handle inside a wooden panel. He grasped it and pulled, wincing when a door sprang open with a rumble that sounded like thunder in the silence of the night. He waited in an agony of tension for the yells that would tell him that it had been heard, but nothing happened, so he stepped inside, raising his candle to look around.

It had been constructed without windows, and its walls had been lined with wads of cloth, presumably to deaden sound. It was longer than it was wide, and crammed with scraps of metal, planks, pots and tools. It stank of oil, and was certainly not what he had been expecting to find. He was about to explore it when he heard footsteps.

Hastily, he pulled the door to, and snuffed out the candle. A lamp flickered in the adjoining room, and through the crack by the hinges he saw three men: Smartfoot, Lamb and the clerk who had intimidated the others. The fellow did not so much walk as prowl, his eyes darting everywhere. He stopped suddenly, and his stillness was so absolute that his companions froze, too. Then he sniffed the air, like a wolf scenting prey.

‘What is it, Harper?’ whispered Smartfoot.

Harper crouched to
touch something on the floor. ‘Splinters. Fresh ones. Someone was here.’